Box-Office: 'X-Men Days Of Future Past' Soars To $90 Million Memorial Day Weekend Opening

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The Playlist
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The PlaylistMay 25, 2014 at 2:08PM

In order to convey that the X-Men are smaller, less-known characters in the Marvel Universe compared to The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, director Bryan Singer has been given to describe the “X-Men” of late as the “bastard stepchild of the comic-book universe.” And while the X-Men are far from underground or on the fringes, perhaps Singer’s comments do have a tiny bit of merit. While his latest X-picture, “X-Men: Days Of Future Past,” did open to $90.7 million this weekend, that’s far below the forecasted $100+ million the soaring reviews helped project; the film did fall below the opening weekend gross of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Godzilla,” and even the poorly reviewed “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” So yes, ‘Days Of Future Past’ had the 2nd best opening weekend of an X-men movie ever (after "X-Men: The Last Stand"), but relatively, it’s the lowest opening weekend gross of all the summer blockbusters thus far.

In order to convey that the X-Men are smaller, less-known characters in the Marvel Universe compared to The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, director Bryan Singer has been given to describe the “X-Men” of late as the “bastard stepchild of the comic-book universe.” And while the X-Men are far from underground or on the fringes, perhaps Singer’s comments do have a tiny bit of merit.

While his latest X-picture, “X-Men: Days Of Future Past,” did open to $90.7 million this weekend, that’s far below the forecasted $100+ million the soaring reviews helped project; the film did fall below the opening weekend gross of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Godzilla,” and even the poorly reviewed “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” So yes, ‘Days Of Future Past’ had the 2nd best opening weekend of an X-men movie ever (after "X-Men: The Last Stand"), but relatively, it’s the lowest opening weekend gross of all the summer blockbusters thus far.

And while its opening was somewhat disappointing stateside, despite an A Cinemascore for those that saw it and a four-day weekend that should reach $110 million, ‘Days Of Future Past’ performed fantastically overseas with $171 million internationally. Compare it to “Godzilla,” which opened to almost $200 million worldwide—with the tally of the international market, ‘Days Of Future Past’ opened to $261 million worldwide. Maybe not stepchildren after all.

Speaking of “Godzilla,” the monster took a whopping 66% percent plunge in its 2nd weekend, but perhaps that was to be expected when another major tentpole was opening. But even with another tentpole in release, it seems as if word of mouth wasn't as strong as was expected. And it sounds terrific on paper, but box-office pundits are alreadyprojecting that all three summer tentpoles thus far—‘DOFP,’ “Godzilla” and ‘ASM2’ could fall short of $250 million total domestically (and “Godzilla” may not go higher than $200 million domestically, but the upside is that’s already over $300 million worldwide). Compare that to Michael Bay's "Transformers" series: not one of those films grossed less than $300 million at home. Even lesser-touted, non-summer blockbusters have made that mark including "The Lego Movie" and 'Winter Soldier,' which came out at the beginning of April.

Adam Sandler got kicked in the nuts by audiences again. His “Blended” romcom with Drew Barrymore was Sandler’s worst PG-13 opening in 18 years and his second consecutive bomb in a row (if you don’t count the “super team-up” of “Grown Ups 2”). 2012’s “That's My Boy” was Sandler’s lowest-grossing opening since 2000’s “Little Nicky.” “Blended” opened worse than “Little Nicky” and just a little bit better than “That’s My Boy.” Suffice it to say the paid holiday model of stupidity that Sandler has ridden for more than a decade seems to be slowing down and audiences are finally catching on. The upside is maybe these bombs mean Sandler will begin to work with good directors again (and Thomas McCarthy's "The Cobbler" starring the comedian should probably arrive next year).

Rounding out the weekend, the rest of the box-office was probably where it should be with "Neighbors" at the #4 slot, "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" still in the top 5 and no real remarkable growth spurts or tumbles aside from Jon Favreau's "Chef," which expanded by 426 theaters and saw 218% gross. It’s still only at $3.5 million stateside, but for a film with modest box-office appeal that’s been slowly rolling out, that platform-type of release is working. "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" reached the $673 million mark worldwide and as much as you like to malign that series, put that into perspective: it's now outgrossed "Man Of Steel" worldwide, so the global markets seem to have no issue with it (the film has grossed $90 million so far).

Milestones: "Frozen," which shows no signs of slowing down in Japan (11 weeks at #1), just became the fifth-highest grossing film of all time, surpassing "Iron Man 3" with a total of $819 million. Four-Day Weekend Update: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"
grossed $111 million over the 4 day weekend and its global total is already
$302 million. The four-day
"Godzilla" haul was $39.4 million and Adam Sandler’s “Blended”
grossed $18 million over the holiday weekend.